Marcus Cato

Indeed, it may be said, like Nestor, to have been vigorous and active among three generations. For after many political struggles with Scipio the Great, as told above, he lived to be contemporary with Scipio the Younger, who was the Elder’s grandson by adoption, and the son of that Paulus Aemilius who subdued Perseus and the Macedonians.[*](In the battle of Pydna, 168 B.C.)

Ten years after his consulship,[*](184 B.C.) Cato stood for the censorship. This office towered, as it were, above every other civic honour, and was, in a way, the culmination of a political career. The variety of its powers was great, including that of examining into the lives and manners of the citizens. Its creators thought that no one should be left to his own devices and desires, without inspection and review, either in his marrying, or in the begetting of his children, or in the ordering of his daily life, or in the entertainment of his friends.

Nay, rather, thinking that these things revealed a man’s real character more than did his public and political career, they set men in office to watch, admonish, and chastise, that no one should turn aside to wantonness and forsake his native and customary mode of life. They chose to this office one of the so-called patricians, and one of the plebeians. These officers were called censors, and they had authority to degrade a knight, or to expel a senator who led an unbridled and disorderly life.

They also revised the assessments of property, and arranged the citizens in lists according to their social and political classes. There were other great powers also connected with the office. Therefore, when Cato stood for it, nearly all the best known and most influential men of the senatorial party united to oppose him. The men of noble parentage among them were moved by jealousy, thinking that nobility of birth would be trampled in the mire if men of ignoble origin forced their way up to the summits of honour and power;